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Tag Archives: Bitcoin Classic

Nobody votes to adopt anarchy, it just happens. It is emergent, it is organic, and that is exactly the way it should be.

If you asked anyone what was the most innovative thing about Bitcoin, you would likely get an answer such as “censorship resistance” or “financial disintermediation” or “deflationary money”. But the truth is that the biggest innovation of Bitcoin is the fact that it is headless. In fact most of what makes Bitcoin capable of delivering on the aforementioned promises is the fact that there is no company owning Bitcoin, no CEO to sue, or entity to hold accountable. Bitcoin is simply a protocol. Unlike previous protocols like TCP/IP however, this is a protocol that can represent money directly, and as such is likely to have a lot of politics embroiled with its implementation. In the project’s nascency it was just Satoshi who maintained the software, and after his disappearance that torch was placed on Gavin Andresen, and subsequently Wladimir van der Laan. As the project grew in popularity and media coverage, more developers came forth taking on more active roles in its development and maintenance. This is a good thing. The progression went from solo designer, to committee stewardship during the first 5 years of it’s life. Like any committee tasked with such a heavy burden of safeguarding over 6 billion dollars in value, bureaucracy does what bureaucracies are arguably designed to do, slow down innovation in the name of conservatism. For example, the current standing feature change policy enacted by Wladimir, is intended to only allow non-contentious features to be brought into the code base. While this protects the status quo, it also effectively means that the system will cater to the lowest common denominator and prioritize preservation over dynamism and progress.

“Bitcoin will either grow to a million dollars per BTC, or go to zero…”

This is a fine opinion that any person or group is entitled to have, but certainly to impose that ideology onto the network would be in itself an act of oppression, yet we find ourselves presently with a dearth of viable alternatives should we choose to disagree with the conservatism of the Bitcoin Core team (a few of which work for Blockstream).